Magny-Cours: Javier Villa race one report

Javier Villa managed to complete yet another race in this his first GP2
series season. The young Spaniard started from 22nd on the grid and
finished 17th after the 41 laps of the feature race, held today at the
French track.
Villa had a good ...

Javier Villa managed to complete yet another race in this his first GP2
series season. The young Spaniard started from 22nd on the grid and
finished 17th after the 41 laps of the feature race, held today at the
French track.

Villa had a good start, running as high as 12th despite some handling
problems on his car, with the rear tyres quickly giving up. That made it
very difficult for Villa to both stay on the track and ahead of his
rivals and he ended up having a slight off, losing several places on the
spot. Javier managed to get back to the track and continue until the
mandatory pit stop to change his tyres.

With new rubber on the rear the car handling was improved and Villa was
finally able to set times similar to those of the front running drivers,
finishing the remaining laps without any other problems. These final laps
left Villa with positive feelings regarding his car's behavior and his
chances for tomorrows short race, as with less laps to run his rear tyres
should be better suited to retaining their characteristics for the whole
race.

Javier Villa's own words:
"At the beginning of the race the car was a bit nervous at the rear,
with some traction problems and I couldn't avoid going off and I lost
something like 12 seconds before I could regain the track. After that I
kept pushing and once I had changed the rear tyres at the pit stop the
car was better balanced and I have been able to set quite good times,
similar to the best ones."